Part-Time Ambulance Driver

Written 8/7/08

Yes, there is an ambulance serving Puerto Galera, an area of over 22,000 people and about 100 square miles. It is the middle picture, parked at the municipal offices.
It is nice and new. There are no paramedics to staff it, but sometimes you can get a driver to come from his home at night to go to the hospital in Calapan, 1 1/2 to 2 hours away on curvy and rough dirt and asphalt roads. Sometimes it is already gone. Sometimes they do not answer the phone. And sometimes there is a van without a side door that shows up instead. It costs 1000 Philippine pesos or about $22, which is half the price of a private car if you can find one. That can be a month's income. Of course, in the USA it might cost you a month's pay for an ambulance ride, if you don't have insurance. But here, you pay in advance or you don't leave the hospital.
You buy your medicine and bring it to the doctor. If you have a hospital meal, your family brought it.

But I don't want to talk about the hospital. Let's just say that the midwives and staff do everything in their power to avoid having anyone take the trip. Even in normal, natural births there are times that medical intervention is necessary. Poverty increases the risk of birth. We can consider all of our women high-risk, but our midwives are training in advanced midwifery skills as per the World Health Organization. So yes, a lot of the trips are prevented just because Mercy In Action is here.


And sometimes--those times that hospital doctors ARE necessary--sometimes Mercy In Action IS the ambulance service. The old ambulance (top photo) we had here had to be scrapped (top picture) because it had made one too many trips to Calapan City. It had been fixed and fixed and fixed again until it had no life left and could never be depended upon. So now our ambulance is Vicki and Scott's car. A little old green Highlander that is starting to meet the same fate as the prior ambulance. It rattles and bangs and has been in for a few fixes (one pending, in fact!) but it has been making the trips when needed. We try to wisely limit those times, but when you are in the Mercy Business, you use the resources you have.

So, last night, there was a young woman who delivered her first baby. It was a nice, relaxed, normal slow birth. The baby was big and his shoulder got stuck. We turned her in the proscribed maneuver to free the baby and he was then born. He was fine but there was damage at some point and the mother was bleeding from a severe tear deep inside. Kate and the clinic doctor worked in tandem to clamp the bleeding, but this was a true emergency and she needed a transfusion. We had an IV in and had called the ambulance. It was gone.

There was not time for the family to arrange any other transport. They had come in a tricy that morning. It was after 8:30 pm. I brought Scott and Vicki's car around and drove like mad. I was remembering how my Dad taught me to drive fast on the dirt ranch roads where I grew up. He told me "Now, I don't condone driving fast, but if you ever have to, you should know how." (I think he was having fun too...) Anyway, we got to the provincial hospital with the mother still awake and breastfeeding her baby. There was room for 3 relatives and Mildred, our senior Filipina midwife. Plus the mom and baby.

Bet you ambulance drivers in the States are jealous. Because dodging people and dogs and goats in the road are just a bonus. There was not much vehicle traffic, but we did meet the ambulance on their way back. On a blind curve. They corrected at the last minute, and we still have an ambulance in Puerto Galara and a Mercy In Action back-up...

We got there. Then the hospital takes them in, and do not tell us anything. It is hard.

At 11:00 pm went to a private hospital to visit one of our local pastor's young sons who was hospitalized with low platelets and a fever. They feared dengue fever, which has increased in the Philippines this year. The reason the ambulance had been gone earlier was because the local clinic doctor recommended that the boy be hospitalized just in case. The pastor has put his motorcycle up for sale already to cover the ambulance and hospital costs.

We are hoping and praying. We have done what we can.

And we are waiting to hear.